https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1819-0872
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Alexander Neaman, Iván Selles, Carmen Enid Martínez, Elvira A. Dovletyarova, Analyzing Soil Metal Toxicity: Spiked or Field‐Contaminated Soils?, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1 March 2020, Pages 513–514, https://doi.org/10.1002/etc.4654
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Most ecotoxicological studies on soil metal toxicity are performed using spiked soils (i.e., uncontaminated or artificial soils to which increasing amounts of metals in the form of soluble salts are added in a laboratory setting). Such an approach has been widely criticized due to the difficulty in extrapolating the results directly into real field situations (e.g., Spurgeon and Hopkin 1995; Smolders et al. 2004).
It is well known that metal toxicity is greater in spiked soils than in field‐contaminated soils where pollution may have occurred decades ago (Table 1). For instance, total soil metal concentrations yielding 10% inhibition in freshly spiked soils were up to 100‐fold smaller (median 3.4‐fold) than those in corresponding aged soils or field‐contaminated soils (Smolders et al. 2009). Such disparity is attributed to the fact that metal toxicity depends on metal residence time in soils, among other factors. This process is referred to as “aging” and takes place over a period of time. For this reason, many investigators argue that metal‐spiked soils are of limited use for environmental assessment and soil quality decision‐making, and emphasize the importance of using field‐contaminated soils for toxicity assays. Nevertheless, few such studies have been performed. For instance, we have found only 6 studies in which copper phytotoxicity thresholds have been determined using field‐contaminated soils (Hamels et al. 2014; Kolbas et al. 2014, 2018; Verdejo et al. 2015; Mondaca et al. 2017; Lillo‐Robles et al. 2020). Likewise, we are aware of only one study on the arsenic toxicity threshold for Eisenia fetida in field‐contaminated soils (Bustos et al. 2015).
